At a Time Like This (11 page)

Who knows? I hope she was right. Particularly when I think of Ray, who promised so much and delivered so little. Who let me down in all the ways that counted: fidelity, friendship, keeping his
promises. By then, I could see Frank’s devotion to Nora, and I was honest enough with myself, even at the time, to know that I envied it.

Last night I was rummaging through some old boxes that have sat at the bottom of my wardrobe for years and I came across the photos of Frank and Nora’s wedding. Now I know that I’ve
been crying at the drop of a hat these days, but those old photos finished me off. Twenty-five years. What struck me about them most was how
unprepared
we all looked. Not innocent exactly,
nor even foolish: just completely unprepared for the fact that life is a string of random disasters and occasional happinesses held together by – if you’re lucky – the cement of
friendship and the glue of family. Back then, though, we all believed that there was a caring, moral order to the universe: you just had to find it. And being good, playing by the rules and
treating everybody fairly meant that the caring universe came to you. You’d be saved from sickness, death, betrayal. Well, bollocks to all that. But it was that
belief in
love and
justice and fair play that lit up all our young faces. Lit us up in dozens of faded photographs, all celebrating the bride and groom.

Nora and Frank’s wedding reception was held in Portmarnock, in what was at the time one of the poshest venues on the Northside: the Country Club. Claire suffered the horrors as she read
the menu. Prawn cocktail Marie Rose, roast turkey and honey-glazed ham, Black Forest gateau. And then the band. Oh my God, the band.

‘Is this the
live
band?’ Georgie whispered. ‘How can you
tell?’

Claire was speechless as the four young spangled men on stage murdered their instruments and shrilled us into silence with feedback. We all laughed like drains. I often think now that Frank and
Nora’s wedding may well have been the most unsophisticated of the three that took place within our small group: but it ended up being the most enduring marriage of all.

Ray and I were in the middle of a row that day. No surprises there, then. I had been embarrassed and upset at his . . . let’s call it his over-friendly behaviour towards one of the
bridesmaids. Nora’s sister Eimear, for God’s sake, not yet seventeen. How much of a cliché can one man bear to become? Afraid he would do a ‘Godfather’ on me, I
followed him outside as he followed her and then he accused me of not trusting him. Heigh ho. I made that bed, yes indeed, and I’ve lain on it for over twenty years.

On her wedding day, Nora was the picture of innocence. Despite the makeup, her face still managed to look scrubbed and shiny. Her dress was white, of course. It was frothy, fussy, much too
feminine for her clunky frame. I heard Claire sigh as we turned to watch Helly walk down the aisle on her father’s arm. She nudged me and whispered: ‘Wrong! All wrong! I steered her
gently in the direction of the sleek, the tailored, the forgiving! And just
look
at what she chose: she looks like a slice of Pavlova.’

But despite her awkwardness, her crooked tiara and a wildly overgrown wedding bouquet, hopelessly out of keeping with her outfit, Nora looked the picture of pure and certain happiness. The
photographs prove it. A honeymoon in Gran Canaria, a house in the suburbs and a pre-planned, already packaged Christmas in Tipperary with her in-laws. Georgie declared that Nora’s citizenship
of Stepford was now complete. And, of course, she returned from her honeymoon pregnant.

And what did this wedding do to the rest of us? Hard to pin it down, really. Except that I believe such a momentous step made all of us think. I mean about our relationships, our lives and what
we wanted from them. I know I doubted that Ray and I could have a future. I felt a wave of certainty about our uncertainty together, right in the middle of the wedding ceremony as I watched the
tenderness of Frank’s expression when he put the ring on Helly’s finger. We could hear how his voice shook and how he got some of the words mixed up. He joked afterwards that that was
his way of getting out of the marriage if things didn’t work out.

‘Got the vows wrong, your Honour – contract can’t be valid.’

He even raised the ghost of a smile on Helly’s father’s lips and that was some trick. I think we were all surprised at how witty his speech was that day. And he looked exactly like
what he was. An ordinary man delighted that life had given him what he’d always wanted.

Paul and Claire, on the other hand, were on the verge of their split. I can still remember Claire’s face at the end of the evening, when I ran into her in the Ladies. I had never seen her
look like that.

‘What is it?’ I asked her. She was ashen. Our eyes met in the big mirror above the handbasin. She was very carefully repairing mascara.

‘Nothing. I’m okay’

‘Claire! I’m your friend, for fuck’s sake! Don’t tell me there’s nothing wrong! What’s going on? Has something happened?’

She turned to me and said: ‘I can’t talk to you about this, Maggie, I just can’t. So don’t ask me.’ And she leaned towards the mirror again.

Then I knew. ‘It’s Paul, isn’t it? Something’s happened between you and Paul. Tell me.’

She shook her head. Ask Paul to tell you. Blood’s thicker than water.’ She snapped closed her silk evening bag, the one I’d brought her back from London, and then she walked
away.

The next part of the evening is a bit of a blur. Someone’s uncle had been persuaded to sing, and once he got a hold of the microphone, there was no way he was letting go. I could hear the
strains of
An goin to a weddin is the makin’s of another . . . Oh dear me, how would it be if I died an aul’ maid in the gaaaaaaarret?’Nobody
could stop him. Irish weddings
in the eighties could be really tacky. And this was fast getting to be one of them. Nora’s father tried to take the microphone away from Uncle whatever-his-name-was, but even he had no
luck.

I couldn’t see Claire in the crowd and had to listen to the bandleader call on Aunty Mary or Uncle Joe or whoever, to come on up and sing a song. And still the uncle on stage kept going
‘ . . .
If I died an aul’ maid in the gaaaaaaarret?
I wanted to kick something.

‘None of your business, Mags,’ Paul said to me when I cornered him later on. I must admit that he looked only marginally less devastated than she did.

‘But you
love
her,’ I hissed in his ear. The band was deafening. ‘I know you do. The two of you are great together. Why are you throwing it all away?’

He looked at me. ‘It’s over.’ Then he shook his head. ‘There are some things that can’t be fixed, and there’s no point in trying.’

Fixed? I remember asking myself. What could be broken between these two? They were the perfect couple. If it was us, me and Ray,
then
I could understand. I didn’t know what kept me
going back to him for more. The ‘hook of hope’, isn’t that what the psychologists call it? The belief that
this time,
he means what he says.

I got no more out of Paul. Georgie and I talked about it afterwards. She could see how upset I was. And then even she dried up.

‘Claire has asked me not to talk about it,’ she said, when I asked her what was going on.

‘Georgie, this is me, Maggie. Your best friend, remember? Or is there something here I’m missing?’

She shook her head and sighed. ‘Of course not. Claire doesn’t want the three of us to fall out over it.’

I looked at her. I was speechless.

She put her cup down. ‘Truth?’ she asked.

I nodded.

She leaned towards me and spoke quietly. ‘Her heart is broken, Maggie. I don’t think she can bear to talk about it. She refuses to tell me anything. We have to leave her alone.
You
have to leave her alone.’

And so I did. But that doesn’t mean I got over it.

Nora and Frank’s wedding was not ‘the makin’s of another’, quite the opposite, in fact. While Helly lumbered off, snowed under with confetti and good wishes, Claire took
herself home by taxi, so quietly that no one noticed she was gone. Except me. I saw her go. And she saw me, too. She looked back at me over her shoulder as she climbed into the back seat. There was
sadness written all over her face and something else, too. Something I didn’t recognize until years later. And by then, so many things were too late.

Shortly afterwards, I left. The heart had gone out of things for me. I couldn’t find Ray, so I headed home on my own, my patience exhausted. True to form, he came crawling back the next
day. He cried, his face white and remorseful. And I took him back, of course I did. It
would be
different, he promised. It
would.

It would and it would and it would.

And Georgie?

She and Danny had danced all evening – but only the slow sets. They kept disappearing outside, and returning with shining eyes and broad grins. I knew what they were getting up to. Danny
was a serious dope-head in those days. I suppose you could say he was serving his apprenticeship. I’ve never been sure why Georgie put up with that. She dabbled, but she never used like Danny
did. I had the feeling even then that she was marking time with Danny. And that time was limited.

Less than two weeks later, term began. Into our second year, we were now Senior Freshmen. Georgie had passed her repeats with flying colours: she got herself a First. I was glad for her. Failure
did not come easily to her. Her results were the excuse for some serious celebration. We still kept on the flat at number 12, but something among us had shifted. Weekends were different, Claire was
different. Even Georgie was different. Her First seemed to fire up all her ambitions. She spent longer and longer days in the library. I was happy enough to take refuge in my sewing machine on the
nights when she wasn’t home. And there was always Ray. Astonishingly, I missed Helly during that second year. It’s amazing the things familiarity will do to you.

I’ve put Nora’s wedding photos, along with my own, back where they belong – at the top of the wardrobe this time, pushed towards the back behind the hat boxes. It really is the
strangest thing, to see yourself from the point of view of the completely different person you can become over the years. When I see myself now, I no longer see myself, if you know what I mean. The
young ‘Maggie’ and the forty-something Maggie are not even distantly related. ‘Maggie’ no longer exists.

At least she hasn’t, up until now. Not for the longest time. But I can feel her presence. I’m beginning to welcome her back, the longer all of this goes on. Claire told me once about
shedding her skin when she came to Dublin first, about the transformation of rural innocent into urban sophisticate. I like the image. Snaking along, leaving a life discarded. And I like that
feeling of struggling out of a carapace, being born again as something new.

Breathing other air.

Wearing other skin.

4.
Georgie

So. It is good to be home.

Everything around me here gives me pleasure. I don’t know why I keep forgetting just how much. It’s as though each visit is coloured like Tuscan pottery: vibrant and rich and
completely right while in its own surroundings, but garish and tawdry under Irish skies. The time in between visits foments uncertainty, I have discovered. It’s as though I suspect that with
each return trip I’ll be disappointed. That this time, the light will have dimmed, the glory dissipated. But once I get here, all that anxiety leaks away. My spirits begin to soar at the
first sharp smell of cologne and black tobacco, at the wall of heat outside Peretola airport, even at the chaos of the car rental desks.

Yesterday, I didn’t mind standing in line, waiting my turn. Instead, I people-watched. Under normal circumstances, I find rubbing elbows like this with the hoi-polloi distasteful. Maggie
has called me an incurable snob. I make no apologies. But yesterday afternoon was – as were so many other things – definably different. Even though it was still months away from high
season, the airport was swarming with anxious elderly Americans, imperious Brits, a motley crew of backpackers: a whole melting-pot of nationalities. As I’ve said, I am neither a patient nor
an observant traveller, but for once the multitudes afforded me endless fascination. It was as though I were watching the world gain an added dimension, a consciousness of being poised on the cusp
of change. I realized even as I thought it how ridiculous that was: how insignificant, in the grand scheme of things, were the events of my personal universe. Nevertheless, I was seeing the people
around me in sharp relief, their faces arresting, all the possible secrets of their small lives compelling in a way they had never seemed to be before. Even the woman at the Hertz desk, whose badge
proclaimed her to be Patrizia, was of interest to me. No longer young, her makeup was heavy but impeccable, the eyes dark with defiantly spiky lashes. Her lips were outlined in what looked like
black pencil, filled in with scarlet gloss. Just for a moment, I was reminded of Maggie. But Maggie would never wear such obvious, in-your-face lipliner – hers would be infinitely more
subtle, a much better match. And neither would she wear such an expression of inhospitable boredom.

I greeted her – Patrizia, that is – pleasantly. My Italian isn’t up to much, but I have to say I find Italians prefer the odd linguistic stumble to being shouted at. I have
often watched their faces cloud over as yet another tourist behaves as though increasing the volume can make up for not speaking the language. So.

‘Buona sera, signorina,’ I said. And I slid my driver’s licence towards her. ‘Mi chiamo Georgina White.’ Then I placed my passport in front of her, open at the
photograph page. Ludicrous though that photo is, six years on. ‘Ho prenotato un automóbile—’

But she wouldn’t allow me go any further. ‘For how many days?’ she asked, her voice heavily accented, but the English fluid, confident. I detected more than a trace of
weariness. Nevertheless, she had the grace to smile.